An Intro

This is an intro that I posted in an unschooling group, and I liked it, so I thought I would share here :))
We are Vanessa, Peace (birth name Kassidy) girl age 11, Noble boy age 3, and Najaia girl 11 months :)
-where you live in San Diego (are you from San Diego? Did you move here?)
My parents lived here when I was born, and after they divorced when I was 2, my mom and I lived in San Diego until I was 10 and we moved to New Mexico, where we lived for a year. Then we moved to Boulder, Colorado for a year and a half, then Pueblo, Colorado. When I was almost 16 we moved back to Oceanside, and I have been here (except for a couple short-lived moves back to Pueblo) ever since :) Look! My life is a great geography lesson! Lol
-your interests/kids interests
We have lots of interests in this family, and they change so quickly! :) Our whole family loves swimming at the pool or at the beach (as long as it is local, so we can shower off completely as soon as possible -- sensory sensitivities here :)), cooking, gardening, various crafting, painting, reading, watching movies, driving places (sadly, our gas budget doesn't allow this as we would like).
My oldest picked her name Peace several months ago, because she is a hippy at heart (gets it from her mama). She loves science and inventing things or taking them apart to see how they work. She is currently very into gaming (Wii, PS3, computer, iPod apps) and is just getting back into reading (she was an avid reader, then tried public school for a week and a half and didn't touch a book for a year) and almost anything outdoorsy (bikes, scooters, climbing trees, etc.), and at park days she usually ends up romping around with boys slightly younger than her and having forts and wars of various kinds -- these games usually include weapons of various kinds as well (funny how once we go radical unschooling, she found interests in things she never even showed interest in as a youngen! Lol). You may wonder how someone who loves "peace", who started a "Greener Earth" club, who is so gentle with animals, who is strongly opposed to injustice, can also passionately love warring and fighting so vehemently... So do the rest of us :)
My son is "cool" (not cute or even handsome anymore, and definitely not beautiful!). He is all boy, and I never prescribed to gender differences before -- all cuddly fun boy :) Sometimes he's a bad guy, but don't let assumptions fool you -- even he knows that some bad guys are nice, and in fact sometimes his invisible bad guys come hang out with us and Noble offers them his food. He loves to romp around and have wars with his older sister at park day -- at home, he is usually playing with his guys (a motley crew of G.I. Joes, Batmans, ninjas, motorcycle guys, Elmo, Diego, and goodness knows who else) and animals (farm and wild) and blocks and big legos, or out in the backyard with a stick to fight bad guys and rolling around and hiding in boxes (we just moved). Unlike his sister, he is so gentle when he fights people and usually asks if they are okay when they have fallen down dead or injured :))
The baby has just started taking her first steps (!!!!!!!) and loves to be on the move -- she is a magnet to water, sand, technology (monitors and hand-held gadgets), other kids, anything her siblings are playing with... Yeh. She is musically inclined -- she loves drumming and dancing (Hey Ya, by Outcast is her current favorite song). She is a smiley thing :) I love watching her unfold and learning more about her :) She was born at home unassisted, and she carries that same attitude toward life -- she is very adamant about what she wants and doing it herself -- can't imagine where she got that from!! :)))
I love homestead stuff, reading and researching (books and Internet), photography and digital fun, creating (paper crafting, sewing, want to learn how to knit, gardening, building things) -- I am a very DIY person, and I'm very excited about all the opportunities in this new home we just moved into :) I am a very relationship-oriented person and have spent a large majority of my past and present learning to build and maintain joyful, consensual, authentic relationships with people (and myself). I hope to someday live communally, after we have bought an RV and travelled everywhere our wheels can take us of interest.
-places you love to go
We have Sea World passes for another year and a half that we have barely put a dent in! I want to get passes to the Wild Animal Park (the Zoo is depressing to me because the enclosures feel so small!). We love going to the beach (no further south than Encinitas though, unless they have full showers where we can wash all sand and sticky salt water off and feel refreshed and clean and dry :)). Pools and water parks. We like long drives with scenery, so if anyone wants to take a roadtrip... :)
-thoughts/goals/successes/challenges pertaining to unschooling
The theory of learning through living sits perfectly in my philosophy of life, so I haven't had any hitches concerning academic stuff, except trying to find my comfort level with "teaching", because I love to teach (school at home style -- for my benefit, not because I think they need it), so I have been trying to find my comfort zone with solicited teaching (my oldest wants more school-type stuff, and my son has recently started showing an interest in learning numbers and letters). Radical unschooling, too, fits comfortably in my life philosophy -- the challenges come in trying to implement it into our life. Being a single mama means we have to get pretty creative about some things, and I often feel overstretched, which is especially hard for me because I am very sensitive in areas that are impacted (like my brain short-circuits with clutter, which is hard to manage without help from my kids while doing everything else), so I feel a daily roller coaster of relaxing and tensing, which seems to be wearing me down sometimes. So, I guess my biggest challenges are finding my own dance between controlling and allowing, and navigating situations when another person would go the other way with something :)
-ideas for this group
Lots of meetups :) Group discussions on topics (online and in person)? Learning co-ops or workshops? Lending library (books and supplies)? Fun fairs (like a science fair, but an opportunity to show off anything of interest to you in a way that is fun and creative -- in other words, a strewing fair :))? Kids' craft sales, toy sales, book sales? Activities specifically meant to attract older kids/teens? Book clubs for parents, teens, kids. Lotsa "field trips" together, local and maybe far (carpool or caravan style). Themed days (like "Art day" or "Twilight the Saga day"). Camps.

The Dude House

I have 2 small-ish matching bookcases, and I was going to get rid of one of them, but decided instead to convert it into a playspace for Noble. I thought it would be perfect in the bookcase, because it would already match my furniture and hopefully blend a bit better into the adult-looking first-glance at the house :))

The idea came from loving to handmake things for a doll house, so we made Noble a dude house for his guys (a motley crew of various G.I.Joes, Batmans, Buzz Lightyear, Joker, Diego, Elmo, Ernie, Katara -- from The Last Airbender --, and more :)). We have lots of ideas for it (LOTS of supplies in the craft room), but it looks kinda barren right now.

The first picture is of the un-renovated bookcase (now holding books and musical instruments), and the second picture is of his dude house, still in it's beginning stages. It has 3 levels (a painted box wood glued in as the "house" part of the area, and then the bottom level is the shelf of the bookcase and is where we will put more "outdoor" type stuff), and some bumpy packing insulation wood glued to the top side for his guys to climb all over and stand alone in/on. It currently has a homemade bed on the uppermost level (made from a sheet scrap glued onto a small box, and then I made a small blanket and pillow out of football print flannel scraps that were going to be diapers for him, but he mastered using the potty that week instead).

We have some grand plans with lots of ideas on the horizon :)) Some are to take some little skateboard clippings from magazines and put "pictures" up in the dude house, paint it better and put down some carpet or wood flooring, make a playground with wood playground equipment (and tin foil over a cardboard slide), an obstacle course for his guys to train on, a kitchen (they must be starving!!), a tea party set/ dining room set, and more... I am seeing what his interests are and wanting to create miniature versions for his guys :) I also want to give him plenty of room to use his imagination and create his own props, too, with blocks and sticks and other such outdoor supplies :))
Across the room is the beginning stages of a farm for his animals, too. I will post pics and such on that after we get some grass in! So far, it's only dark rich soil (brown fabric waiting to be painted when I can get a different yellow acrylic paint so it comes out a yummy green).

Hope this inspires you!

Family love